Technical methods and systems in living rooms and homes, which are intended to make possible an increase in the quality of living accommodations and quality of life, security or energy efficiency using networked and remotely controllable devices and installations as well as automatable operations, are increasingly combined in building services automation under the generic term “smart home.” The aforementioned concept thus includes both the networking of home technology and household devices, such as lamps, blinds, heating, cooking stove, refrigerator and washing machine, as well as the networking of components of entertainment electronics, for instance by central storage and home-wide utilization of video and audio contents. A smart home, in this sense, exists particularly if all the lighting fittings, push-button switches and devices used in the home are networked with each other.
A challenge, in this connection, is the secure communication between the mutually networked units. In this respect, the objective is to extend the smart-home infrastructure by including additional communication partners, without weakening the security of the network in such a way that unauthorized persons could also obtain access to the units connected.
To attain this objective, WO 2013071999 A1 provides a method which includes the steps of providing a data carrier, which is assigned to the smart-home unit, and on which setup data for integrating the smart-home unit into the smart-home system are stored; reading out the setup data stored on the data carrier by the central control unit of the smart-home system; and developing a communication channel between the smart-home unit and the central control unit, based on the setup data.
Such methods, which are based on an approach known in cryptology as Pre-Shared Key (PSK), are not very suitable for everyday use in the application by the end user, who is technically not necessarily well versed. Just the archiving of the utilized data carrier or password does not satisfy the requirements of the target group with respect to an uncomplicated device and extension of the smart home.